The Art of Manliness - Chasing Shackleton — Re-creating the World’s Greatest Journey of Survival

00:00:00.000 brett mckay here and welcome to another edition of the art of manliness podcast

00:00:10.940 if you've ever read the classic book endurance you probably shivered and shuddered as you

00:00:15.480 wondered what it would have been like to have undertaken ernest shackleton's famously arduous

00:00:19.380 antarctic rescue mission the adventurer tim jarvis did more than wonder when alexander

00:00:24.120 shackleton challenged him to recreate her grandfather's epic journey he jumped at the

00:00:28.020 chance to follow in the legendary explorer's footsteps today in the show tim the author of

00:00:32.840 chasing shackleton recreating the world's greatest journey of survival first shares the story of

00:00:37.720 shackleton's heroic effort to save the crew of his failed antarctic expedition tim then tells us how

00:00:42.620 he and his own crew replicated shackleton's journey over land and sea from taking the same kind of

00:00:47.180 rowboat to eating the same kind of rations and the lessons and resilience and leadership he learned

00:00:51.540 along the way after the show is over check out our show notes at aom.is slash shackleton

00:00:58.020 all right tim jarvis welcome to the show thanks for having me so you are an explorer and adventurer and

00:01:15.560 in 2013 you did an expedition in which you recreated ernest shackleton's famous rescue mission in the

00:01:23.140 antarctic i'm sure a lot of people have read that famous book endurance um we're going to talk about

00:01:28.360 that adventure today but before we do let's talk about your background how did you get started with

00:01:33.220 exploring the antarctic well look i mean i've always explored things ever since i was a kid i grew up in

00:01:39.040 malaysia as a young child my parents used to just send me outside and tell me to go and find things to

00:01:44.180 do and that stayed with me all through all through childhood all the way into adulthood and the

00:01:50.220 expeditions just got bigger and bigger and i think once you've spent a bit of time in your own

00:01:54.640 company and and being that version of yourself you feel most like yourself when you're in those places

00:02:01.560 so i've just kept on going and i guess the the ultimate conclusion is to end up doing shackleton's

00:02:06.740 journey before you did shackleton's expedition you recreated the douglas mosson expedition for those who

00:02:14.140 aren't familiar with that expedition what was it and where did you get this idea to replicate it

00:02:18.380 yeah look i mean i've done lots of expeditions in the modern way but i've done two the old way

00:02:22.280 mawson and shackleton and mawson was an australian scientist he was a contemporary of shackleton

00:02:28.020 um he'd gone on an expedition with two colleagues to chart an uncharted section of antarctic coastline

00:02:36.480 and essentially the first guy about 350 miles out from base fell in a crevasse he went down the hole

00:02:45.380 with the dog team and the sled that contained about 80 percent of the food for the three men so once he

00:02:50.320 was gone mawson and the surviving guy were left with a essentially a 330 340 mile return trip back

00:02:58.700 to base with only about 20 percent of the food they needed to survive the second man died halfway home

00:03:04.280 in mawson's arms of what he described at the time as fever but it could well have been it could have

00:03:10.320 anything could have been malnutrition hypothermia frostbite bit of gangrene but mawson was the sole

00:03:17.920 survivor of that expedition and many people had asked you know what is it that happened to the second

00:03:22.340 man and did mawson need to eat the the second guy in order to make it and so i decided to do that trip

00:03:28.700 the same way as mawson with the same starvation calories he had to see what happened i just traveled

00:03:34.120 with an increasingly nervous russian guy we started from the point at which the first man died and

00:03:39.440 the russian guy and i john basically tried to trek back to base the same distance as mawson on the same

00:03:45.220 food that he said he had without the need to eat him and i made it but i lost i lost over 70 pounds

00:03:51.820 in weight and fell over the finish line but i'm pretty much convinced that the thing that killed the

00:03:57.400 second guy was eating the dog livers on that original expedition and he got vitaminosis that's what

00:04:03.400 killed him and uh that it could be done without the need to eat the second man so um the prize was to

00:04:09.580 be asked to do shackleton's journey what's vitaminosis what is that that's when you uh things like the

00:04:16.120 livers of arctic animals contain toxic levels of vitamin a and humans just cannot metabolize that so

00:04:24.240 if you eat the awful of those animals whether it's a polar bear or a fox or a dog or a reindeer you are

00:04:31.140 poisoning yourself they didn't realize that back in 1913 but that's what was happening so you mentioned

00:04:37.000 you did some other expeditions the modern way what were some of those expeditions you've done in

00:04:40.720 antarctica well look i've been to antarctica 13 times i bid to be the first person across antarctica

00:04:46.980 one side to the other on foot unsupported i got about 2 000 kilometers on that journey it was a pretty

00:04:54.660 brutal brutal trip the thing that prevented me doing the total crossing was a fuel leak into my

00:05:01.740 food about three quarters of the way through the journey but i did get the record for the longest

00:05:05.740 journey at the time i got to the pole in 47 days and then out the other side i've also been down and

00:05:12.380 made a vr film called thin ice which is all about showing the amount of change that's happening in

00:05:17.220 antarctica that required getting to some pretty remote places then of course there's the mawson

00:05:22.440 expedition there's the research for the mawson expedition then there's shackleton and the

00:05:25.900 research for that and um i've been to the high arctic five times so look i i spend a lot of time

00:05:32.560 down there when you do these expeditions whether it's a modern one or a recreation what's the hardest

00:05:38.260 part is it the cold is it the long distance you have to walk the solitude what do you what do you

00:05:43.920 what's been your experience uh look on any given day the difficulty changes i mean sure you can have

00:05:49.480 extreme extreme weather you can have monotony you can have danger if you fall in crevasses which

00:05:55.860 has happened before um i think it's the relentlessness of the place that really does you in i think the

00:06:03.100 key thing with successful expeditions is just having your own internal frame your own internal

00:06:07.980 kind of way you're going to conduct yourself because you've got a place with 24 hour light if you go in

00:06:14.280 the summer you've got an endless white horizon you have to impose your own kind of structure on

00:06:19.840 on things and just agree to do what you set out to do otherwise you can kind of get lost in the

00:06:26.240 enormity of the place so i think it's the relentlessness you know you can't stop or you get

00:06:31.120 cold the only time you can stop is really when you get in the tent at the end of the day but even that

00:06:35.780 has to be done as quickly as possible because you're 10 000 feet up on the polar plateau and it's

00:06:41.620 minus 40 degrees so you've got to move fast so i think it's that relentlessness well let's talk about

00:06:47.220 shackleton's famous adventure when did shackleton make what became his most famous antarctic trip

00:06:54.200 well shackleton had done uh he'd been south with scott of course on his expedition in 1903-05 and he

00:07:02.060 was invalided home actually from that he then went a second time on the 1907-09 nimrod expedition and he

00:07:08.880 almost made it to the south pole so this was actually his third expedition the one that he's

00:07:14.740 he's really renowned for was the third expedition and he went down on the eve of the first world war

00:07:20.400 in 1914 and the goal was to cross antarctica from one side to the other because of course

00:07:25.360 scott had made it to the pole sadly didn't make it back he and his team of four

00:07:30.780 died amundsen the norwegian of course made it in and out with no problem they were just

00:07:35.940 slaughtering and consuming their dogs and feeding the weakest dogs to the strongest in order to make

00:07:42.160 it but they did a very good job so shackleton thought to do one better than what scott and

00:07:46.600 amundsen had done he would go all the way across that was the basic plan and he he left literally as

00:07:51.700 first world war was breaking out okay when did things start going awry for the trip well i mean i think

00:07:57.960 things went awry almost from the outset i mean they left the uk he wrote to churchill who was head of the

00:08:03.640 admiralty and said look give me the word and i'll give over the whole the ship the expedition

00:08:08.600 resources the men to the war effort and churchill just said proceed it was a one-word response

00:08:13.580 and things went wrong almost immediately they got down to antarctic waters they reached south georgia

00:08:19.400 on the way down which is an island at 54 degrees south middle of the atlantic at the bottom basically

00:08:24.820 and they got down there and they realized that when they spoke to the whalers who were there

00:08:29.380 they said look the ice is so thick this year you're never going to make it to antarctica but

00:08:33.400 unfortunately of course they had no choice but to keep going and and they did and of course encountered

00:08:39.520 the pack ice and the ship ground to a halt about 40 miles short of the antarctic coastline where it

00:08:45.300 remained until the pressure of the ice crushed the hull and the ship sank so look it started going wrong

00:08:51.020 from that moment how long did it take for the ship to sink after it got packed in ice well they were

00:08:57.300 stuck uh on the ship for 10 months and they were then once the ship had sunk they lived on the pack

00:09:05.120 ice for a further five months so they had you know a year and three months either in the stricken ship

00:09:11.980 or on the pack ice so that takes you through by that stage to 1916 unbelievably you know they were they

00:09:20.780 were at 1916 and when the pack ice broke up after they made camp on it they paddled for five days to

00:09:28.740 reach this island called elephant island there everybody remained he left 22 of his men there

00:09:34.640 under two of the upturned rowboats that they were in and he headed off in april 16 to do this crazy

00:09:40.560 journey across the southern ocean to try and raise the alarm and rescue the guys he'd left behind

00:09:44.900 okay so give us an idea what did that journey look like so they dropped them off at elephant island

00:09:48.680 where did he go after that well like i say the ice broke up they paddled for five days in three rowboats

00:09:54.640 they left two there with 22 men and then shackleton and the five strongest got in the most seaworthy of

00:09:59.500 the boats they took plants off the other two and made a kind of deck on the one they were going to

00:10:03.820 take the james cared and they headed off across the southern ocean the nearest inhabited place that you

00:10:10.400 could reach was this island south georgia where they visited on the way down there there were

00:10:14.920 whaling stations the problem was it was 800 nautical miles away across the roughest ocean in

00:10:20.500 the world and they only had a sextant to measure the angle to the sun or a star if they could see

00:10:26.240 them and you know you miss the island either because you can't find it or you sink in them on

00:10:34.120 the way up there obviously that's bad but if you miss it there's no way you can turn around and have

00:10:39.080 another go because the winds and currents that have pushed you north from antarctica towards south

00:10:43.320 georgia won't allow you to sail back to have a second go so they had to get the trajectory right

00:10:49.180 first time across this vastness of the southern ocean with mountainous seas and they experienced

00:10:54.580 two storms and a hurricane on the way up there almost capsizing on multiple occasions before they

00:10:59.660 made it and then they make it and then they had go on a hike after that well yeah that's right i mean

00:11:04.380 they arrived from the south and they celebrated because they found south georgia but of course they

00:11:08.600 arrived on the wrong side really they arrived on the southern side the southwestern side of the

00:11:13.040 island and all the whaling stations where the people were were on the northern side so they

00:11:18.340 couldn't sail around because if you try and hug the coastline the same winds and currents that have

00:11:23.440 pushed you north will just push your little rowboat onto the rocks and and you've got to understand that

00:11:28.400 south georgia is mountains 10 000 feet high really really jagged angular peaks like the alps you know

00:11:36.640 coming straight out of the ocean so the only thing for it was to climb through the uncharted interior

00:11:41.780 and of course they had no equipment they had no climbing ability they had no tent so it meant they

00:11:48.080 couldn't stop they had to keep moving they had pieces of congealed animal fat for their sustenance

00:11:52.860 from the seals they killed on the ice and they pulled the nails out of their packing cases and

00:11:57.620 pushed them back through the soles of their boots for grip because they didn't have any crampons so

00:12:01.360 it was a pretty serious undertaking to attempt this it was desperation but they had no choice

00:12:06.660 how long did the hike take to get to the whaling station when shackledon got to south georgia they

00:12:12.760 had the worst weather south georgia can throw at you so they were actually stuck on the beach where

00:12:17.100 they landed for a further four or five days at which point shackledon realized three of the

00:12:22.440 guys he was with were just in such poor shape they weren't going anywhere so he was already reduced to

00:12:28.420 him and two others to try and make the crossing and the crossing then took 96 hours sorry in their

00:12:36.340 case 36 me it took 96 36 hours of constant movement with no ability to rest for more than a few minutes

00:12:43.820 at a time or you would freeze they had no shelter so by the time they reached the whaling station

00:12:48.640 they've been out there for a long time and then once he got to the whaling station shackleton immediately

00:12:54.000 started planning a rescue mission to get his men that he left on elephant island and when the ship

00:13:00.240 finally got there this was almost two years after the endurance got stuck in the ice and all 22 of

00:13:07.600 his men were still alive and the end result was shackleton saved his entire crew i mean no one died

00:13:14.120 correct yeah that's right i mean you know he is really the almost the entire opposite of of what

00:13:19.420 happened to scott scott died along with all his men very heroically in his bid to reach the south

00:13:23.860 pole and shackleton equally heroically but for different reasons saved everybody on his failed

00:13:29.720 attempt to cross antarctica from one side to the other he brought everybody home all 27 men and they

00:13:34.660 got back in 1917 just in time to participate in the final years of the first world war so what was

00:13:41.640 shackleton like as a leader what made him different from scott and the other antarctic explorers that

00:13:46.720 allowed him to despite all the odds carry out successfully this rescue mission well shackleton was a people

00:13:53.220 person really he was an outsider he was anglo-irish which has meant that as far as the irish were

00:13:58.800 concerned he was a bit too english and the english regard him as sort of a bit too irish and so he

00:14:03.880 didn't really sit comfortably in either camp he was merchant navy rather than scott who was royal navy

00:14:09.600 so he couldn't just rely on commanding people to do things like you can in the royal navy you could

00:14:15.620 back then you know you an officer issued an instruction you had to do it even if you didn't agree

00:14:20.500 with it whereas merchant navy you know you had to really be liked by people or they wouldn't do

00:14:26.420 things for you and he had a lot of female influences in his life as a young man and that maybe made him

00:14:31.760 a bit more emotionally intelligent than the equivalent male of that period would have been so all in all

00:14:37.500 it basically made him the kind of person who was more compassionate he was a tough guy but he was

00:14:43.000 compassionate and he understood how to get the best out of people and it was all about putting

00:14:48.300 yourself in their shoes and seeing things from their perspective and that allowed him to target

00:14:53.780 the way he spoke to people to get the best out of people and the other thing that stood out to me

00:14:58.420 as you wrote this book and carried out your own expedition you also talk about how shackled and he just had

00:15:04.600 this unwavering optimism no matter the odds he's like oh we're gonna be fine like he was very intentional

00:15:10.000 about it yeah you know he said optimism is true moral courage and he just had that fundamental

00:15:16.300 optimistic outlook on life maybe it was his uh his irish genes maybe it was his upbringing maybe it was

00:15:25.200 just who he was as a person but yeah absolutely he just had that incredible what we would now call

00:15:32.240 growth mindset where if a problem came your way he just looked at it as an opportunity to uh prove

00:15:37.900 himself and to overcome it and he rose to every every challenge problems are just things to overcome

00:15:44.720 after all i think he said and he just he just seemed to enjoy it it was all part of the game and part of

00:15:49.700 the test uh genuinely philosophical uh outlook on life okay so you get this idea to replicate

00:15:57.180 shackleton's journey and we're going to talk about the lengths you went to to make sure you got it as close

00:16:02.560 as possible so you tried to make the same type of boat the same type of clothing the same type of gear

00:16:07.480 that these guys would be using the same sorts of rations any expedition to the antarctic is a huge

00:16:13.200 undertaking there's so many moving parts there's layers upon layers of bureaucracy that you have to

00:16:18.560 go through just to make a trip happen when you set your eyes on this goal to recreate shackleton's

00:16:25.280 journey what was the first thing you had to work on well the first thing to do was to decide how we

00:16:31.640 were going to do this were we going to do it absolutely true to the way he did it and once

00:16:36.980 we decided we were that kind of made a lot of things in some respects easier because you just

00:16:44.260 decided you were going to use a keelless rowboat you just decided you were going to use non-waterproof

00:16:48.760 clothing you just decided you weren't going to use you know gps you were going to use a sextant

00:16:54.820 which meant learning how to traditionally navigate using one so we could make the same kind of mistakes

00:17:00.580 they made because essentially we were copying copying them so i think you know once you've made

00:17:06.220 that decision in some respects yes it makes life a hell of a lot more unpleasant for you

00:17:10.980 but it makes the thinking bit a little bit easier because on expeditions you're always trying to give

00:17:17.980 yourself a bit of an angle and increase your chances of success but this time around we were just trying

00:17:22.520 to you know copy what he had and and and let the cards fall as they may you know so i'm not saying it

00:17:29.780 was easy quite the opposite you've got to rebuild all the boat and the equipment and learn traditional

00:17:35.140 ways of doing things but at least you're just copying what he did the thing that stood out to

00:17:39.840 me when you're building the boat the hardest part was all the customs and the dealing with different

00:17:47.140 countries laws on imports and exports and there were a few close calls where the boat almost didn't

00:17:52.900 make it to where it needed to get to to launch this mission yeah look i mean it was almost five years of

00:18:00.340 pretty torturous planning and stress to make it a reality which is i guess why no one had done it

00:18:06.040 since shackleton you know you and and you're right i mean the boat almost didn't make it on many

00:18:11.760 occasions i mean there are all sorts of issues with funding for a start but and then you've got to find

00:18:16.020 the expertise to do it but i was leaving to go to france and i was getting on the uh there's a

00:18:22.140 the train tunnel that links to the uk and france and i was just about to put my car on that and go

00:18:26.860 into zero phone reception and i got a call saying the boat is on a bigger ship about to do the same

00:18:32.620 crossing as me but on the surface and the paperwork is not in order and you know i had to make frantic calls

00:18:39.060 to australia to get custom information and ownership details across to the port authorities

00:18:46.240 and i had about you know two minutes to do it before my train left and i i was plunged into half

00:18:51.560 an hour of no phone reception if had i not made that the boat wouldn't have got across to france we

00:18:57.340 wouldn't have made the ship that my little boat was going to piggyback on to go down to antarctica and

00:19:02.420 there wouldn't have been an expedition and this sort of stuff was happening all the way through

00:19:06.020 the whole process when when the boat finally got down to antarctica ahead of us it was traveling

00:19:12.760 on a bigger ship and the bigger ship couldn't get into the base that i'd spent two years lining up as

00:19:17.340 the place that i would drop this boat off on at because the pack ice had moved in and again within

00:19:24.220 24 hours i had to come up with an alternative plan even though the previous plan had taken me two years

00:19:28.840 to arrange so yeah look it wasn't without its stresses you mentioned funding how much did funding the

00:19:34.480 trip take up your time and bandwidth oh look funding always took up a lot of time but i mean you look

00:19:40.220 back at the heroic era and frankly nothing was different back then either i mean um even amundsen

00:19:46.340 who's regarded as being this kind of morally upstanding norwegian who wouldn't ever do anything 0.97

00:19:53.340 wrong i mean he left owing money and just thought you've just got to go and do the expedition and we'll

00:19:58.200 make money if we're successful and it was the same for shackleton and uh the same for many of them

00:20:04.700 frankly and it was you know to an extent the same for us i mean we obviously couldn't leave

00:20:10.500 owing money but i certainly went with a lot of debt and you know we were lucky we had backers like

00:20:17.120 discovery channel and pbs as the broadcast partners but a lot of their funding of course went into the

00:20:22.280 making of the film we made not the funding of the expedition so um yeah look it took me years to

00:20:28.520 raise the funds to make it a reality i just tried to take a leaf out of shackleton's playbook and uh

00:20:34.760 and look at these things as problems to be overcome yeah that i like that idea that they're just problems

00:20:39.660 to overcome and i love this the lessons that you can learn from shackleton or even you trying to plan

00:20:44.500 this trip maybe people aren't listening to this show aren't going to be planning a trip to the

00:20:48.500 antarctic but we've all got these big projects that we have to do maybe we're like renovating our house

00:20:52.960 and same sort of thing you're going to have these red tape obstacles you're going to run out of money

00:20:57.340 plans that you had they're going to fall through you just have to not stress out about it too much

00:21:01.940 and just see them as problems to overcome we're going to take a quick break for your words from our

00:21:06.780 sponsors and now back to the show so planning the trip going through the bureaucracy funding the trip

00:21:18.380 that consumed a lot of your time but then you had to start recruiting for this trip how did you

00:21:22.940 recruit for your trip and then did you get any lessons from shackleton on how to recruit

00:21:26.740 shackleton ran an advert that may or may not have been real certainly he said it whether it appeared as

00:21:33.260 an advert i'm not sure but it said men wanted for hazardous journey months of bitter cold darkness

00:21:38.320 low wages honor and recognition in case of success safe return doubtful and he got about 3 000

00:21:45.080 applicants for the 27 places now i thought about running the same advert i didn't in the end the

00:21:51.040 word got round we were doing what we were doing and there were so many people who were interested that

00:21:55.120 we were we had about 300 applicants for the five places on board on board the boat we weren't going

00:22:01.320 to sink a perfectly good uh square rigger down in antarctica and leave 22 people on elephant island we

00:22:06.900 were just going to get in the keelless rowboat the james cared and do the the rescue mission followed by

00:22:12.580 the climbing and i had about 300 applicants but i think what was so clever about what shackleton said

00:22:18.880 is the framing the way he put it he basically said look if you're interested in a good time

00:22:23.640 and coming and meeting new people and traveling to interesting places perhaps don't apply but if

00:22:28.760 you're interested in doing something at the limits of your own personal endurance then maybe this is for

00:22:34.560 you because you're going to discover new things about yourself that will make you far

00:22:38.060 life far richer maybe not in monetary terms but in spiritual terms then uh then please sign here and

00:22:47.620 i think it appealed to people they thought yeah i'm up for that let's see what happens what sort of

00:22:52.340 individuals were you looking for for your trip well i mean at that very basic level you're looking for

00:22:58.920 five people to accompany you because there's six of us in total you need people who can sail

00:23:03.380 or climb or film or preferably a combination of all of those things so the team were two real gun

00:23:10.880 sailors nick bub paul larson ed wardle who's an everest mountaineer who's also the former free

00:23:17.860 diving champion of the uk so a single breath deep as you can go he got down to almost 300 feet

00:23:22.900 barry gray who's my climbing partner who's former head of outdoor survival for the uk armed forces

00:23:29.580 and seb coulthard who is a royal navy guy very good at technical stuff so he he really project

00:23:37.820 managed the construction of the boat so you need all of those skills climbing boat building filming

00:23:42.040 sailing and navigating but you also need more than that you need what malcolm glabwell calls

00:23:48.080 divergent intelligence so you've got you need people who have got the capacity to think laterally

00:23:53.720 be positive in difficult situations and always be focused on getting a positive outcome

00:23:59.560 so you need problem solving ability as well as the technical skills so you've mentioned some of the

00:24:05.100 period equipment and gear that you brought for your expedition you used a sextant the clothing you used

00:24:10.280 was just it was basically cotton clothing that you did you like waterproof it with wax did you do any

00:24:15.160 type of waterproofing on this stuff yeah they they waterproof because i mean you know you've got to

00:24:20.200 remember that antarctica is the driest windiest highest coldest continent in the world but the emphasis

00:24:24.860 on the driest is that some places there's been no no rainfall or snowfall for 200 000 years you know

00:24:30.900 it's very very dry you're not going to get you're not expecting to get rained on or snowed on really

00:24:35.520 so their clothing was breathable and windproof and so it was just tightly woven cotton they were never

00:24:43.020 intending to do an open boat journey in that clothing um so they used rendered down fat from seals

00:24:49.580 to sort of basically try and waterproof their clothing and we used a kind of an equivalent form

00:24:56.720 of just organic grease really so no animals were killed in the making of the film but we did use

00:25:03.020 kind of grease we just wiped it on with our hands and frankly after a couple of days it had washed off

00:25:07.960 anyway and the clothing just wasn't waterproof but that's what we did so food the original expedition

00:25:13.240 they killed some seals along the way you can't do that today so what did you all do for food to

00:25:18.660 get as close to the food that they ate as possible yeah we we we were really really very clinical about

00:25:25.900 the way we went about working out the food because you got protein fat and carbs and we really tried to

00:25:32.240 get exactly the same proportions of those we remade the pemmican pemmican is the kind of sledging ration of 0.99

00:25:38.560 the heroic era which is basically very very high fat content food we made pemmican exactly the same

00:25:47.700 recipe as them we took the equivalent meat that they would have got from the seals they ate in the

00:25:54.380 form of we took kangaroo jerky which is very very lean and we we worked out that it was exactly the

00:26:01.560 same sort of fat content as the non-fat meat of the seals they consumed and then we made up the rest of

00:26:08.760 the fat load with more of the pemmican which essentially is just congealed lard anyway so we took exactly the

00:26:14.940 same stuff as they had and we had the nougat and the nuts and the whiskey we took exactly the same as

00:26:20.420 they had we were able to look at their rations very carefully and and recreate them how many calories a

00:26:25.700 day did you get for each man well i mean you know bear in mind even though their food was high fat and

00:26:32.220 had lots of energy in it they actually didn't have much of it because of course they'd spent 10 months

00:26:36.060 on the ship eating most of the food and then five months on the pack ice once the ship sank

00:26:40.680 before they did their five days to elephant island and and so they were using food up all the way

00:26:46.920 through so by the time they got to elephant island before they embarked on this journey they didn't

00:26:51.120 have much left so we were only on about two two and a half thousand calories a day which is no more

00:26:56.280 than you would have back home basically kind of ration that a a fit male would probably consume

00:27:03.360 back home and it's not really enough for the extreme cold you experience and and of course you're

00:27:09.860 getting wet the whole time so your body is working very hard to keep warm and burning burning lots of

00:27:14.820 calories so we probably needed 5 000 but we were only eating about two two and a half did you lose a lot

00:27:19.480 of weight yeah i lost weight not as much as on the mawson expedition where i lost 70 pounds i probably

00:27:24.880 lost about 35 pounds on this trip because you've just got the stress of it all you got the the ever

00:27:31.280 present cold we had one good day when the weather was i wouldn't call it warm but it wasn't cold

00:27:36.520 it was um you know the sun actually came out but we got to south georgia we had five days of

00:27:42.160 you know 100 120 mile an hour catabolic winds you know and then crossing the mountains itself is a cold

00:27:50.320 unpleasant exercise so yeah you know you're you're burning through the calories so let's talk about the

00:27:57.440 trip itself so it starts off on the boat you guys create a replica of the boat that shackleton and

00:28:03.080 his crew used you uh named yours the alexandra shackleton after the granddaughter of shackleton

00:28:08.520 and the patron of your trip what was life like on that boat and like how much space did you have

00:28:14.500 i mean even like things like going to the bathroom what was that like well look i mean everything is

00:28:18.920 everything's challenging i mean you're living in the space the size of a queen size double bed

00:28:23.360 for six men basically so you're there's no lying down you're sitting on top of rocks shackleton took

00:28:30.640 a ton of rocks off the beach at elephant island to try and weigh the boat down and stop it tipping

00:28:34.780 upside down in big c in the absence of having a keel the vertical that sticks out of the bottom of the

00:28:40.520 boat to stop capsize happening so you're sitting on rocks and camera batteries to the equivalent weight

00:28:45.200 as what he had and you're sharing two steadily decomposing reindeer skin sleeping bags that

00:28:54.380 people have been sick into and you know you've got five of you just sitting there waiting for the guy

00:29:00.120 who's last in line to you know go up on deck and try and steer the boat at which point the guy who's up

00:29:07.460 there on the helm comes down and everybody moves around one if you know what i mean toilet was just done

00:29:12.160 in a bucket right kind of more or less in your face between one another and you've got about

00:29:18.640 half an inch of of large planks separating you from the zero degrees celsius seawater of

00:29:24.980 the southern ocean and it's rough and noisy and dark and basically extremely unpleasant so sometimes

00:29:32.020 as terrible as it was to have to be on the helm trying to steer the boat particularly at night

00:29:37.340 with waves crashing over you with frozen you're frozen solid you sometimes look forward to the

00:29:43.540 prospect of that rather than being stuck down below in a tiny cramped seated position you know sitting on

00:29:50.080 top of the rocks so look it was uh you know not much fun yeah was there a moment during that the boat

00:29:56.040 trip where you thought yeah we're not going to make it we're not to abandon this trip yeah you know there

00:30:02.420 are always those moments the question is what do you do about them you know to say that you don't

00:30:07.900 have that feeling you know pop up into your mind on multiple occasions during trips like this would

00:30:15.000 be lying i mean you do have those feelings but we never seriously thought about stopping but we did

00:30:19.940 have near capsized situations at sea and very very big sea state we did find ourselves approaching south

00:30:26.500 georgia going pretty quickly because we had massive seas pushing us onto south georgia and you've got a

00:30:33.480 limited ability to steer and you've got boiling cauldrons of rocks just below the surface you've

00:30:38.080 got these vertical cliffs that go straight up into five six thousand foot high peaks even at the coast

00:30:43.880 you know massive intimidating place to try and land a keel-less rowboat basically in big seas and then you

00:30:51.400 know crossing the mountains of south georgia we have multiple crevasse falls so and no equipment

00:30:56.100 really to you know get somebody out if one fell in and was injured so yeah there were many occasions

00:31:02.120 where i thought this could be bad if we don't get it right but luckily we prevailed so how long did it

00:31:08.340 take you to get from elephant island to land it was two weeks at sea followed by yeah five days when we

00:31:17.020 got there pinned down by very bad weather and how long did it take shackleton well he in fact took 17 days

00:31:23.120 it took a few more days than us but one of the reasons being they uh they almost made it and then

00:31:27.740 a hurricane blew them offshore they were tantalizingly close and they got pushed offshore

00:31:32.300 and they had to wait till the sort of prevailing seas came back to allow them to get pushed back onto

00:31:38.640 shore again so they were lucky they didn't get pushed out to sea and get pushed past south georgia

00:31:43.860 or as i say they would never have been able to sail up wind to reach it again they were lucky they just

00:31:48.820 got pushed back in the direction they just come from okay so two weeks on board a boat where you

00:31:55.380 have the space that's about the size of a queen size bed that's really cramped that's pretty tight

00:32:01.160 you know being around that many people did you guys have any personality clashes while you're on the boat

00:32:05.900 and if so like how did you manage that yes i mean there were the inevitable things but what i would say is

00:32:12.000 there are a good bunch of guys we'd had many of those disagreements before we ever got on the boat

00:32:15.820 you know so i think the key thing with team dynamics on expeditions or in any walk of life

00:32:20.900 is that you've got to be honest with one another and so we had some pretty frank discussions and

00:32:25.340 disagreements before we ever got there so and and that makes your relationship strong enough

00:32:31.420 to withstand what comes with an expedition you know there's no point going down there everybody

00:32:35.740 being friendly and happy and avoiding disagreement for the sake of harmony because as soon as you get

00:32:41.280 down there you're going to find the pressure is on and things can fall apart so look we'd had plenty

00:32:46.760 of plenty of disagreements and arguments and things like that they're all constructive though and um

00:32:51.620 we were a pretty tight-knit group by the time we got there you know that's not to say you don't have

00:32:56.060 disagreements when you're on board i mean it's difficult when you've got someone's backside in

00:33:00.200 your face and you're you're cold and wet and hungry and you're feeling sick and you're worried about

00:33:05.420 whether the boat will manage the next the next big wave that's about to hit tempers get a bit frayed

00:33:11.380 all right so you get to land that's when you start having attrition that's when you have members

00:33:14.780 starting to drop out what caused the attrition basically it was people's feet because you're

00:33:19.940 standing in leather boots with woolen socks often in knee to thigh deep freezing seawater so

00:33:28.540 really for the most of the time on the boat you're not feeling your feet properly sometimes for an

00:33:34.360 extended period of time sometimes days and for some of the guys that meant frostbite and what

00:33:40.940 they call trench foot which is what the the soldiers used to get in the first world war in the trenches

00:33:45.380 you're just cold wet in a seated position in their case so you don't get shot in our case there was just

00:33:52.240 no space and your circulation goes in your feet and so three of the six guys were unable to do the

00:33:58.580 mountain crossing but what's interesting that attrition set you up so your trip your hike

00:34:04.060 it would mirror shackleton's a bit more correct it was really amazing when you think that when

00:34:10.340 shackleton got there two of his guys were in very poor shape and he left the third man to keep an eye

00:34:14.920 on those two he left them under the upturned boat on the beach that they arrived at and then he and

00:34:19.740 the two strongest did the crossing of the mountains but he did it with tom cream he was the tough guy on

00:34:24.740 their expedition and a guy called frank worsley he was the skipper and navigator and when we got there

00:34:30.680 we were intending to do the crossing as a team of six the idea was that the three sailors would put

00:34:36.600 on modern gear brought in by another small yacht and then they would have modern comms and they would

00:34:42.680 be our kind of backup and me baz and ed the three mountaineers would stay in the old gear and do the

00:34:50.380 crossing that's the way it was meant to be but with injury we ended up with me and baz baz being the

00:34:56.420 hard guy me being the expedition leader and we ended up with paul who was our navigator because

00:35:01.540 the other guy's feet were too bad and it was the same three as shackleton you know he did it together

00:35:07.260 with tom cream the tough guy and worsley the navigator we did it as the expedition leader the

00:35:11.920 tough guy and and and our navigator so it was wonderful actually after you got over the initial

00:35:17.200 shock of three guys dropping out you thought actually this is a positive thing because it's bringing

00:35:23.160 us closer to what shackleton went through so you didn't begin the hike right away you actually you're

00:35:27.760 on the like the shore for a little bit correct well we had the worst weather south georgia can throw at

00:35:32.220 you for five days so we just got pinned down we couldn't couldn't get away we at that stage did

00:35:37.260 have tents because we knew we couldn't turn our boat upside down like shackleton had done once he got

00:35:42.600 there because we knew our boat ultimately had to be towed out of south georgia and removed you can't

00:35:47.720 just abandon boats down in antarctica these days so we knew we were going to have to have to take it

00:35:53.300 out so we did concede and have some tents on the shore they got blown blown away but really really

00:35:59.840 in really bad shape we ended up hiding in a cave and getting driftwood and getting fires going in the

00:36:06.140 cave just to sustain ourselves from the weather we were experiencing it was it was pretty brutal

00:36:11.480 did shackleton have something similar where you he was camped out a bit before he started the hike

00:36:15.700 yeah shackleton also ended up in a situation where he had to wait it out for a few days

00:36:21.620 for him it was for slightly different reasons they'd been forced to um to stop off at what he

00:36:27.360 called cave cove which is a different spot in the same bay before he moved after a period of time there

00:36:34.340 they moved a bit closer to the head of the bay before they started their climb but you know the

00:36:39.260 amount of time that he had to wait at the amount of time we had to wait very similar again we didn't

00:36:43.980 try and make that similarity happen it just happened with the weather we were given so you said earlier

00:36:48.720 that south georgia has a lot of high jagged peaks what were the hiking conditions like south georgia

00:36:55.740 is like an alpine mountaineering exercise it's very very steep terrain i would say the climbing up is

00:37:02.960 actually not bad it's perfectly doable the difficult bit is the going down and there are two serious

00:37:09.020 descents you have to do if you follow exactly the footsteps he took the first is off the trident

00:37:15.660 mountains where you're on the high ground and you've got to kind of find a cool wall between

00:37:19.740 these mountains that stick up out of that ice cap and you've got to go down those to get to the lower

00:37:24.940 ground and that's about a 1500 foot descent down very very steep terrain so that's the first bit that's

00:37:32.820 tricky the second thing that's tricky is crossing through the glaciers where

00:37:36.380 crevassing is a major issue and you have to travel whether the weather is good or bad you've got to

00:37:41.840 keep moving and so we traveled even when we couldn't see where we were going and you know that means you

00:37:47.100 fall in crevasses you don't even see and the third thing is break wind ridge which is the final ridge

00:37:52.420 going down into the valley just before the whaling station that's about a thousand foot down climb and

00:37:57.740 that is the most dangerous bit of all certainly the steepest and if you follow shackleton's diary

00:38:03.140 that's what he did and so that's what we did and it was pretty challenging because if anybody falls

00:38:09.440 you just pull the other two guys off with you and you fall to your death so it was tricky and we were

00:38:16.440 very very pleased when we got to the whaling station i can tell you and so it took you guys 96 hours

00:38:21.640 correct it took 96 yeah i mean one of the reasons for that was we were actually joined also by a yacht that

00:38:27.960 had come in we had a beacon on our boat that showed this other yacht who weren't with us but could see

00:38:32.980 us in the southern ocean they could see when we were approaching south georgia and so they they too

00:38:38.140 made their way to south georgia and then it brought with it two camera guys who had a lot of mountaineering

00:38:45.200 experience and the idea was they would be in modern gear and they would accompany us to film what

00:38:49.980 happened on the mountain crossing um basically they decided they couldn't do the crossing the weather

00:38:58.220 was too extreme one guy had a kind of injury the other guy decided it wasn't for him too extreme

00:39:05.900 and so both of those guys were out so part of our 96 hours related to having to kind of stay with those

00:39:13.520 guys and try and make sure they got down safely in the end they had to make their own way down but we

00:39:19.000 still had to stick it out with them on the high ground for about 36 hours so that accounts for

00:39:23.820 36 hours but i'm not quite sure where the other day came from that it took us compared to shackleton

00:39:29.500 it's amazing the speed that he crossed that terrain yeah it seemed like the tv crew got on your nerves

00:39:36.040 quite a bit there were there seemed like there were necessary evil sometimes yeah yeah that's right 0.96

00:39:42.180 that's right i mean shackleton never had to put up with that sort of shit i said to myself excuse the 0.82

00:39:46.840 language i mean you know and it's true you know when he was there it was just him and the enormity 0.96

00:39:54.720 of the landscape through which he traveled and the pressure he felt to make sure that somebody made it

00:40:00.400 to raise the alarm to go back and rescue the guys he left in antarctica for us we were burdened by

00:40:05.940 the film guys you know for them it was a job really for us it was a vocation you know it was a calling

00:40:13.100 and that's the difference none of my guys got paid me included and we were there because of the love of

00:40:18.420 it whereas i think if you've got people who are there because they're doing a job as good as they

00:40:23.320 might be it makes their kind of decision matrix a little bit different to yours and that's what

00:40:28.760 happened did you suffer any injuries on the hike in the climb well i mean i've already already had

00:40:34.920 bad frostbite on my hand haven't lost any fingers but i certainly lost sensation permanent nerve damage

00:40:40.800 in those and same with my right foot and that same old injury flared up again but i wasn't about to tell

00:40:46.620 anybody because i just don't think it it really uh it really helps but no apart from that we made it

00:40:54.520 through unscathed uh lost weight had a few crevasse falls as i say more than a few crevasse falls

00:40:59.520 but luckily none of them were serious the title of the last chapter of the book comes from a line

00:41:04.360 from shackleton he said never for me the lowered banner never the last endeavor what did that line

00:41:11.920 mean to you after you completed this journey it meant that for me there was always another challenge

00:41:18.360 you know it's not in life as though you retire from something it was a calling for him it is for me

00:41:24.420 you know there's never going to be a last thing until it's the last thing and then it'll be beyond

00:41:29.940 your control to do anything about it you know there's always going to be something you're going

00:41:33.200 to take on and i've for me i i i guess i've remained consistent to that throughout my life i've got a lot

00:41:40.420 of energy i'm i can't imagine just stopping why would you for him there was always the next thing

00:41:47.100 and for in his case he went back down six years after the expedition that in many people's eyes

00:41:54.380 was his greatest victory yes he didn't make the crossing of antarctica but he did save everybody

00:41:58.940 and demonstrated this incredible leadership and heroism in the into the bargain and he went back

00:42:05.200 one more time and died of a heart attack back at the scene of his greatest victory back at south

00:42:09.320 georgia the night he arrived and so that was the final chapter for him but he was kind of he went down

00:42:14.820 fighting what have you been doing since this expedition oh look since the expedition i've

00:42:20.380 had a project called 25 zero which involves climbing all the mountains at the equator that

00:42:24.720 have a remnant glacier to highlight climate change and i i've got through 16 of them and then covid sort

00:42:30.460 of got in the way and i've been working on that i made a film called thin ice which is a vr experience

00:42:36.180 about shackleton design really for kids but more grown-up kids seem to like it than kids or at least

00:42:41.520 both like it i'm working on with the australian government on setting up marine protected areas

00:42:47.420 down in the southern ocean and we had a big success last year with macquarie island which is one of

00:42:52.920 australia's three sub-antarctic islands now has a big sanctuary of almost half a million square

00:42:58.420 kilometers around it lots of things i'm working on i've got a reforestation project i'm working on

00:43:03.860 called the fork tree project i continue to make films i continue to do trips and i continue to work

00:43:09.560 on the environment stuff and as far as i'm concerned they're kind of all interconnected

00:43:13.020 makes sense to me anyway so never the lowered banner for you never the lowered banner never

00:43:18.500 the last endeavor that's right well tim this has been a great conversation where can people go to

00:43:22.580 learn more about the book and your work so look i think the best place to go is probably by website

00:43:27.300 timjarvis.org they can go to thinicevr.com and they can go to theforktreeproject.com which is my

00:43:37.100 reforestation work and then of course there's social media is timjarvis am as in am like the

00:43:43.240 morning and that's on linkedin and instagram fantastic well tim jarvis thanks for your time

00:43:47.960 it's been a pleasure thank you bro it's been wonderful my guest today was tim jarvis he's

00:43:53.080 the author of the book chasing shackleton it's available on amazon.com you can find more information

00:43:57.300 about his work at his website timjarvis.org also check out our show notes at aom.is

00:44:01.760 slash shackleton where you find links to resources and we delve deeper into this topic

00:44:05.120 well that wraps up another edition of the aom podcast make sure to check out our website at

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The Art of Manliness - February 12, 2024

Chasing Shackleton — Re-creating the World’s Greatest Journey of Survival

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